There are two basic reasons:
The first is that fennec foxes don’t have the same musk glands as other vulpine foxes.
That’s actually quite a plus. Other foxes– especially red foxes– are known for producing an odor that smells something like that of a skunk.
Fennecs don’t produce that odor.
The other is that fennecs live in packs.
They don’t live in packs to hunt larger prey, but their family groups have essentially the same dynamics as a wolf pack.
A wolf pack is based upon a mated pair that have an intense pair bond, and virtually all the other animals in the pack are their grown offspring, which stay behind to take care of their younger brothers and sisters.
This same dynamic exists with fennec foxes.
With more than two adults to forage over the desert, the young fennec kits get more attention and more food than they would get if only their mother and father were caring for them.
Humans have already domesticated one dog species that has this particularly social arrangement.
It’s actually been suggested that reason why humans domesticated wolves so easily is that both humans and wolves have similar social arrangements. Both wolves and humans may have recognized as similarity in this regard, and the two species were able to form very close relationships.
Maybe something similar could happen with fennecs.
It’s certainly true that most fennecs in captivity today are derived from ancestors that were dug out of dens.
In North Africa, people have kept pet fennecs for centuries, but it’s been only in the past few decades that anyone thought of keeping them in the West.
They are still wild animals. Not all individuals have docile temperaments, even when bottle-raised.
But it seems to me that as these animals become a bit more established in the pet trade, there will be attempts to breed them with more docile temperaments.
Although we have domesticated populations of red and arctic fox, these animals are not widely available on the pet market (for the reasons I mentioned earlier).
But fennecs could become the second canid species to become established as a domestic animals.
All it will take is a large enough gene pool of captive individuals and a concerted effort to selectively breed them to be suitable pets.
This may sound a bit far-fetched, but when I was a child, it was impossible to buy golden hamsters– even those with fancy colorations and coat lengths– that were naturally disposed to be tame.
All of the hamsters I owned bit me at least once, and most bit at least once a month.
Today, you can go to a pet store and buy hamsters that have been selected for “low reactivity.”
Hamsters have been bred away from the grumpy little things that they are in the wild.
And what’s more, pet golden hamsters derive from only a single litter that was captured near Aleppo, Syria, in 1930.
They are perhaps the most inbred of all domestic animals, but even though they are inbred, they have been able to produce just enough genetic variation to produce unique coat lengths and colors and just enough variation in temperament to produce very gentle strains.
Captive fennec foxes have a broader genetic base than golden hamsters, so it may be possible to begin another canid domestication process.
We’ve done it before.
We can do it again.
Do you think raccoons could ever be domesticated to the point that they make good pets?
Possibly.
I think we could try to domesticate just about anything with an adaptable diet that will also breed in captivity.
In this way, I sort of disagree with Jared Diamond.
But, as you indicated earlier, a predisposition toward living in social groups, makes domestication of a given species more likely.
Could it be done with hyenas?
It might be too much of risk with the hyena’s jaws to try it.
There was a guy in Miami who had a pet hyena in his apartment. Things went well until he tried to force it into a cage, and then it broke his wrist.
It was on Animal Planet a while back.
I saw a pair in a zoo. They watched children. Watched their every move.
Well that must mean they would be reat with kids
Another plus for fennecs (as pets) is that they will use a liiterbox. So they can be kept nearly as easily as a pet cat. I’m not sure whether they do any vocalizing but I suppose if they yip at night that could be annoying. But then, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with cats playing leapfrog over the bed too. So maybe a little nocturnal vocalization would not be too bad.
I would say they are a little vocal
I’d love to have a go at fox domestication . .. . who is the “we” who are trying to domesticate them?
Ditto Jen. Please keep us up to date on this. These guys are cute beyond words.
‘Taming’ of fennecs happens but I presume that domestication will require a genetic change? But it’s an attractive idea.
Red foxes, as you imply, are certainly not an indoor option. However, we get lots of instances of them coming into quite friendly association with humans in the UK, especially as they often live in villages and towns where fascinated people, maybe unwisely, put food out for them. One such fox began to visit one particular house up in the village one summer and provided a specatacle for us as we gathered to watch it being fed side by side with the owners’ sheltie – with the two looking like distant cousins. It all stopped when the fox began to take human fox friendliness for granted and a couple of paranoid cat owners called the RSPCA to take brer fox away to distant woods. At least we hope that’s where he went.
What worries me about “domestication” efforts is the possibility that the animal will be dumbed down by genetic alteration. I fear the same for dogs when people talk about shifting dogs from their traditional purposes to “companion animal”.
Umpteen replies and no one has answered the question yet. I’m tempted to say, “Because we’re nuts”.
I was able to handle a fennec once. It was a nice, friendly, unassuming little animal, but quick and busy. To keep it amused they put it in an aquarium with a moss flooring and a bunch of crickets. Fox had to dig up his lunch, which he did with obvious enthusiasm.
He wouldn’t do well in an ordinary apartment with knickknacks, rugs, etc. Owner would have to be devoted to keeping the fox.
He was friendly enough. I just fear that someone will attempt to breed a duller, quieter, “more biddable” (gag!) fox.
The concept of domestication, hard to define, even, has caught on. People seem to think either it is or it isn’t domesticated. Don’t know what those terms mean, even, but I suspect it amounts, in the end, to a bundle of genetic defects serving as selling points.
Cats are pussies!
Domestication of ‘some’ animals of any species does not mean that ‘all’ representatives of a newly domesticated species are involved in the exercise, ie dogs are domesticated wolves but there are still wild wolves extant.
[…] https://retrieverman.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/why-are-we-trying-to-domesticate-fennec-foxes/ This entry was posted in Волки и собаки and tagged лисы, […]